


Oh, the Earth Was Made for Lovers

by lilith_morgana



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04, Mild Sexual Content, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 00:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: She thinks about it for years before it happens.Five first times that could have been - and the one that was.





	Oh, the Earth Was Made for Lovers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt “five times” for Lucifer Bingo 2019.  
Title stolen from Emily Dickinson.  
Some of these got a wee bit dark but we end on a light note, I promise.

  
**0\. Building a mystery**  


She thinks about it for _ years _before it happens.

Thinks a quiet night at Lux, a couple of drinks, a couple of conversations, one thing leads to another and he drags her up to his place and fucks her against the Sumerian wall in his bedroom. It seems exotic, somehow.

Thinks a quiet night at her place, she cooks take-away, Trixie is at Dan’s and there are candles lit and music playing and they make out - she misses making out, the slow-moving fully clothed _ excitement _of it that she lost early on with Dan and then definitely after Trixie was born - for a very, very long time.

Thinks that somehow even with everything she knows and fears and cannot reconcile there is a future where it won’t hurt. And he will be in it, she will be in it and it doesn’t matter how it happens.

Thinks anywhere, any way.

\---

He thinks about it initially - intensely and with great pleasure, even picks out sweet 90s jams that fit the fantasies or _ plans _ really because the devil doesn’t need to pine - before he makes himself stop.  
  
He falls in love instead, a cruel, foreign concept that sits tight and closed in his chest, leaving no room for anything.

And then she stands there, chooses him, and it’s not for real because his Father’s punishment never ends. He shuffles the thoughts, quells the emotions, doubles the distractions.

And then she stands there, chooses him, and it’s not for real because she doesn’t know the truth. He kills, she runs, and lines are not so much crossed as they are broken.

After that, it becomes muddled.

He thinks about it in Hell, forcing it into a loop in his mind to keep himself from letting his wrath tear the place to pieces, disembowel every demon.

Thinks of how she might taste, how she might move, all the innumerable ways he wants to make her scream, all the noises he wants to pull out of her, like chords for a piece yet to be written.

It breaks his heart or what’s left of it; it helps by reminding him he still has one. 

* * *

This is _ not _how it happens:

  1. **_There she goes_**

He eats her out on top of his Steinway, thinking _ sorry, Henry but I'm sure you'd understand. _

It’s certainly not the way he had thought the evening would go but he takes his mercies where he finds them.

His body burns with slowly fading hellfire and something else, something even darker that aches under his skin and between his ribs, a familiar sensation of wanting to crawl out of his own being. Father Frank had died in his arms only hours ago and there’s a cavity in the city ever since, a black hole he can’t look away from. So he drinks, and he plays and he almost startles at the sound of his elevator announcing a visitor.

It’s _ her _ and it touches him in a way nothing ever does.

“There’s no new case. I came for you,” she says when she enters, slumps down beside him by the piano and smiles, soft and innocent. Oh, the puns he has in store but he lets them fade out into the night because of the way she looks at him. 

_ Innocently,_ as though he deserves that sort of virtue. As though he ever did.

_ Innocently,_ as though that’s what either of them are. Well, perhaps she _ is_, but that’s not a comforting thought in the slightest.  
  
“I thought you could use a friend,” she says. 

“Right,” he says, clearing his throat.  
  
He doesn't _ have _friends, doesn’t know how that story goes, but he is an expert at other, much less complicated things. 

She tastes of the earth and the ocean and the skin on the insides of her thighs looks almost luminescent in the lights that fall from the windows.

Afterwards she scrambles out, an armful of clothes and that unmistakable shade of regret outlining her body.  
  
He stops working with the LAPD a couple of weeks later when she unexpectedly asks to have him moved to another unit, where he's coupled with a Detective Marsden - old, grumpy, files complaints against her new civilian consultant on day one. 

Lucifer smooths out the hollowness in his chest, tells himself it's for the best, that he’s done being the Good Samaritan and Maze - well nobody is more _ thrilled _than Maze to get him back.

  1. _**Friday I’m in love**_

The last Action Movie Awards that _ Weaponizer _ star Chloe Decker ever attends, she attends with half-in-the-bag club owner Lucifer Morningstar as her plus one. They’re both _ impeccably hot _ , to quote her date, having spent half a fortune (his) and most of the work day (hers) on their outfits.  
  
He claims he doesn’t do plus one, she claims she doesn’t do men like him; they are both wrong.  
  
She does, in fact, do him no less than three times before the party is over that night - each one better than the last, like he promises. Chloe is sure she’s never laughed so much in her entire life as she does when Lucifer sneaks in backstage and steals one of the awards from behind the nose of her least favorite actor in the business. All because she had let it slip that the actor in question had called her _ a bitch with the talent of a dead squirrel _ a few years ago.  
  
“Nobody calls you things like that,” he says and hands her the bizarrely shaped award along with two bottles of champagne. And adds in a terrible accent: “Not on my watch.”  
  
They stroll out of the gala to buy overpriced sandwiches from a vendor and he casually mentions that the stars look better from Heaven before making out with her under one of the constellations. She finds him odd and hilarious, rude and incredibly sweet, finds that the inconsistencies in him have a pull, a certain appeal that feels like a dark undercurrent in the water.  
  
“Let us do this again sometime, eh?” he says when they part; it seems like he surprises himself as much as he surprises her.  
  
“Sure,” she agrees, surprising no one. Well, maybe her father.  
  
It is, all things considered, the best idea she’s had since deciding to go back to school.

  1. **_Fade into you_**

She isn’t even sure _ what _she’s thinking, grabbing her purse and driving to his penthouse.

It’s just been one of those days.  
  
Court had overwhelmed her and in the end she had lost; she’s tired of losing.

Lucifer feels like one thing she has won, however, so she changes into her best underwear, splashes perfume across her chest and tries to behave like she suspects half the city has behaved before her, walking confidently to the elevator that will take her up to his home.  
  
He gives her food, serves her wine, sits so chastely in his chair and waits for her first move that she’s worried she’s read him all wrong but his gaze on her is dark and deep, tells a different story.  
  
“I forgot ketchup,” he says, _ stalling _the kiss. She would never have thought he had it in him. 

"I hate ketchup," she mutters and drags him by the shirt until their lips meet. It's like kissing a fire.  
  
One hand on her back and the other one tangled in her hair, he steers her from the balcony to his bedroom, then later to back to the balcony, the elevator, the kitchen she never even imagined he had. Everything she has dared to imagine about him after hearing his claims and idiotic tales rings true, it _ is _ fantastic. One of those nights - one of those men - you tell your friends about if you have any. He really is _ that _good. 

_ This has ruined me_, she as she stumbles home in the early morning. Eventually, as the tired glow wears off she also thinks _ Trixie will be so happy we’re dating _ because she feels certain that’s what they are, finally, after all this time.  
  
Two days later she receives a text - _ did you know this entire time? DID YOU? _ Her response bounces back, undelivered. When she calls, the metallic voice telling her the number cannot be reached stabs like a knife in her gut.  
  
Three days later she returns to his house only to find that everything is gone. 

  1. **_Walking on broken glass_**

  
  
That night a thunderstorm rolls in, moving over the city like an omen.  
  
Nothing is right lately, least of all tonight. Lucifer’s behavior. The Sinnerman. The ridiculous radio show and the staged date, Marcus’s sudden and recent decision to approach her, go after her with outspoken intentions. She’s flattered, she’s admittedly a little bit _ infatuated _ and all of that tickles deep inside but she’s not sure if it's excitement or fear or both. If Marcus is a remedy for something that needs fixing.  
  
“I wanted to explain,” Lucifer says when he stops by.  
  
He should. Oh, he _ should_. He has so many things to explain and she’s exhausted from dealing with them. Worn down by the way he spins, a flurry of impulses and emotions and thoughts and every time she thinks she’s figured it out he disappears or changes direction. She’s given him trust, faith, the benefit of a damn _ doubt_; he leaves her empty.  
  
“I don’t want explanations,” she says therefore and her voice is hard, harder than she even intends. Harder than it has ever been when directed towards him because he melts something in her, hits her where she’s soft. “I’ve never wanted - all this time, Lucifer - _ God _ \- all this time I’ve only ever wanted you to-”  
  
Lucifer frowns, steps back to look at her. Lately it has felt like she’s losing sight of him, that she’s merely watching him disappear and it kills her to think that she's been wrong about someone so important.   
  
“To what, Detective?”  
  
“Never _ mind_.” She’s angry, she’s snarling and for once he _ gets _ it. He stands there, remains there and looks at her, waiting long enough for her to gather her thoughts and actions instead of running away. “I wanted you to _ care _ . About me. The way I… like I care about _ you _ . Not give Marcus your blessing to date me.”  
  
“I didn’t-”  
  
“I mean, what the _ hell _ , Lucifer? I lo-" she takes a deep breath. Out with it, out with it all. "I love you."  
  
Lucifer looks at her for a long time and she wonders when he will leave.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I’m so _ sorry._”  
  
“I wanted to… protect you. But it seems I have rather made it worse,” he says.  
  
“I didn’t think you could - I was afraid you wouldn’t love me if you knew all of me,” he says and Chloe’s heart breaks, a foreshadowing of darker days to come.  
  
When they finally kiss it’s gentler than the night ought to be but afterwards, in her bed, she thinks she can taste his blood in her mouth and can’t remember how it got there. He presses his lips to her forehead before she falls asleep. She strokes her thumb over the scar on his leg from when she shot him. They chuckle at happy memories and fade out the bad, indulging in a bit of pretense and illusion.  
  
It’s as real as it can be. It’s romantic and hot and it’s _ love _ and they have a few weeks, even months, of happiness before Marcus reveals the truth about Lucifer with a cruelty she really should have known to expect from him.  
  
Chloe, still reeling from the shock, doesn’t see the gun.  
  
Lucifer, for all his wrath and monstrosity, does.  
  
Marcus Pierce is a good shot and he goes for the head.  
  


  1. **_The drugs don’t work_**

  
  
“You’ve become a better man, Lucifer.”  
  
He looks down into his drink and sees dead kids, broken spines, dead cops, the devastation in his brother’s face; he looks down at his hands and sees Hell. Besides him, determined as always, Chloe sees nothing but forgiveness and mercy and it shatters him, having to meet her gaze.  
  
Hope, he thinks. It’s her hope. Her faith in him. It’s nothing like Eve’s nostalgia for a time when she was truly alive and a world that she was robbed of. Chloe sees ahead, sees a future for him that he doesn’t deserve.  
  
“That’s what makes you so special,” he says, watching her eyes light up with stars he didn’t make. “The fact that you see me this way.”  
  
_Because I lie to you most of all. _  
  
Her smile is so brittle. It doesn’t suit her. Chloe Decker is not a fragile thing.  
  
But here, tonight, her smile is. He can’t bring himself to destroy it so instead he drinks up and leaves in silence.  
  
She follows. Her hair gets into her eyes as she hurries up the stairs and without thinking he reaches out a hand to brush away a strand of it; her mouth opens and his breath hitches in his throat.  
  
Everything stops.  
  
Her kiss, when it comes, tastes of salt and vodka and a sweetness that makes him want to cry. He doesn’t, he has no tears to spare tonight, so he returns her kiss instead. Kisses her mouth and neck, the path down from her collarbone to the hollow between her breasts. She makes all the sounds he had imagined she would, running her fingernails down his back and whispering his name into his shoulder.  
  
It's a first and a last. It’s fueled by pain and hurt and confusion but most of all by love and it’s not _enough_.  
  
He should have spared her this.  
  
“Why do I hate myself so much?” he asks Linda, as though he doesn’t already know the answer.  
  
Hell, when it comes for him, runs him over, drowns him.   
  
There is no way to stop it, he can't fend off the transformation into the monster he is so instead he surrenders. 

* * *

  
  
  
  
This _ is _ how it goes:  
  
  
  
_ **+1. Eternal flame**_  
  
  
He carries Hell with him to the penthouse that greets him like an echo, but a lived-in echo. It's kept alive, no cerecloths this time and his bar looks _ used _ , bottles gone and replaced. _ Well done, detective_, he thinks before crashing into the leather sofa, wings and all. _ Well done, indeed_. In the notes he left he had mentioned both Lux and the penthouse, told her that he would like to see them keeping his two homes afloat to whatever capacity they felt they had.  
  
He always did love this building, the Heaven he bought when he lost the first one. 

Hell isn't really a scent (smoke, brimstone, iron) or a taste (ashes, charcoal, grit) as much as it's _ weight _ . A shape of guilt and shame, like an ugly statue built to torment. It holds him down now, a heavy presence in his body that aches from the journey, stings from the fires and looks like it’s not yet settled in a specific form. 

Hell is a noise in his head, a doubt, an original sin hissing its venom into his thoughts.  
  
Hell is everywhere when he falls asleep.  
  
And when he wakes up - moments, hours, _ days _ ? - later, Chloe sits beside him. He must look terrible because she frowns, brushing a gentle hand over his.  
  
He croaks something inaudible, unused to using his normal voice. Coughs a little and tries again.  
  
It’s not how it’s supposed to happen, none of it is.  
  
This is not what he is meant to do to her.  
  
“Yeah. You’re not _ meant _ to do anything _ to _ me,” she says and places her hand on his chest. “I am here of my own choosing, Mr Free Will.”  
  
He smiles at that.  
  
“I missed you,” she says. “We all did. Charlie is five months now. Are you staying?”  
  
He manages a nod. “Hopefully for a very long time.”  
  
Her face softens, the joy in it so bright it hurts.  
  
“I _ love _ you,” she says. “Do you hear me when I talk to you down there? Is that how it works?”  
  
“No, not really.” Lucifer smiles a little, still slightly startled to be here and so unused to conversations, to friendly voices. “But I _ feel _ you. Like a-”  
  
“Ghost?”  
  
“More like an energy. A busy, clever one in your case."  
  
“Ah. Good.” She inches closer, touches his face with quick, eager fingers that map out his nose, his lips, the lines of his jaw. Her scent is still the same, it comforts him to know this. That for the eternity he has been away, Earth remains largely unshaken. “Is this… is this your face now?”  
  
That’s the first time he realizes he is still wearing his Devil face, that is hasn’t disappeared since he arrived. The thought lands badly in his chest, a sharp twist of worry that’s leaving an ugly mark.  
  
He draws a breath. Two. Her face is still as she watches him, _ waits _ for him, and he cannot trace any disgust or fear. All he sees is her love.  
  
“I don’t know what I am, to be honest. Or what -” Lucifer drags out the sentence, shielding himself as much as he’s shielding her. More, perhaps. It’s always been that way. “What I’ll become. Things are changing in Hell, Chloe, I'm, my powers-”  
  
What _can_ he tell her about his powers, how can his words contain them? He thinks of foundations crumbling to the ground, thinks of cracked lava and celestial light flooding the ancient corridors. Samael’s powers burned with such a fire that they were second only to God's own; he had never thought, could never have imagined -  
  
_ Can _ not imagine, not at present.  
  
“It’s too difficult to explain. I’m - _very_ tired.”  
  
“Okay,” she says as though she can truly understand what he means, what he has witnessed, the things he’s _ done _since they last saw each other. “We’ll work it out.”

And then she leans forward, cups his face with her hands and kisses him. He blinks; she smiles. Nothing brittle about it. _ Certain_, this time. 

“Would you mind very much if I asked you to stay?” he asks because Father help him, he is, too.  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
They sleep for the rest of the night and past noon the following day, sleep until Chloe’s phone goes off. Leaping up to silence it, she bumps into the nightstand and curses under her breath.  
  
Lucifer jerks awake, wrapped in a bathrobe which had been the closest piece of clothing available as he came out of the shower last night, and stares at her. For a moment she is afraid he doesn’t remember that he asked her to stay.  
  
Then he smiles, a slow and soft kind of smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. He’s angelic again, more beautiful that she remembers, and he smiles, too, as she returns to bed.  
  
“Ella,” she explains, nodding at the screen.  
  
“Do you have to-”  
  
“_No_.” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t, I don’t have to do anything.”  
  
“Excellent,” he says and sounds a little bit like the irreverent douche she met those years ago, the idiot who sang to her, dumped her, died for her, _ loved _ her.  
  
“Excellent,” she repeats and thinks of falling. Or jumping.  
  
  
  
\---

  
  
  
And it’s not how she thought it would happen but when it finally does, it doesn’t matter.  
  
It has been so long, she used to think, so long with feelings that have had no home in her, no place in their relationship. She has caged and covered and _ hoped_, crumpling up emotions like thin paper sheets when he's refused them; she's broken them apart until they weren't overwhelming, until they did not show on her face at the precinct for every day for every damn case, she's wrapped them in practicalities until they did not make her want to cry; she's walled them up far beneath the surface and now they are almost too distant, a painful hum beneath her breastbone.

But that was before he went to Hell and cracked everything open.  
  
Now it’s different.  
  
He touches her carefully, like he’s afraid her body is a dream and that its contours will dissolve if he makes a mistake and wakes up.  
  
He speaks her name in a tone that she has never heard before. It sounds like it comes from beyond this place, this room, this _ realm _ .  
  
She speaks his name in a voice that feels like fire and flames.  
  
She touches him ravenously wherever he lets her and finds foreign territory, unmapped wastes that she wants to make her own. As they kiss his face shifts back, visible transforms under her lips, her hands, the tip of her nose that suddenly touches burnt skin instead of smooth.  
  
“‘I’m sorry I-” Lucifer flinches, pulls away. Her hands force him to remain. “It hasn’t quite settled.”  
  
“No. Oh _ no _ , keep it.” She’s hoarse, thinks of kings on their thrones, thinks of _ might_, of all those things she had no idea even existed before she saw his true form and now, she thinks, now she doesn’t want to unsee it. He’s a hurricane, a perfect storm and she entangles her limbs with his, holding on; he’s an ancient power buried at the beginning of time and he is _ hers_, his endless power and broken divinity, at once a lethal weapon and a comfort, bright and burning like the stars he tells her, casually, that he’s made from dust as if she has a body made to contain such knowledge. And she has, she _ has_.  
  
This is a truth he has made her understand, empowered her with. The infinite source of her _ own _ strength.  
  
“Keep it, let me see you.” Her hands on his hips, her mouth over the hollow of his throat.   
  
“You can’t be serious? Why would you _ want _ that?”  
  
“Because I _like _it.” Her breasts against the warm skin on his chest, her fingers traveling south. "Because it's _you_."   
  
“But-” he protests and she kisses him again. Thinks of how they have pushed each other away, wrecked themselves with deeds until they had no longer been able to call it back through language alone. They are long past that now, their bodies have already shed the history they cannot endure - she finds no words so she takes his hand, moves it between her legs and he growls, hiding his face in the curve of her neck. “Oh - _ Chloe_.”  
  
His voice is gravelly, almost broken in its desire but she is whole.  
  
Everything moves.  
  
It’s _ nothing _ like she thought it would be; it’s not better nor worse, it simply does not fit the ideas.  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
Afterwards, she trails a path of unanswered questions along his spine, the divine lines of his bones.  
  
Afterwards, his hands play with her hair while he’s muttering something, voice low and foreign, several different languages forming a knot of words that all sound like prayers.  
  
But he tells her that he loves her in a language she understands.


End file.
